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An image sent back from the Ikaros spacecraft shows a portion of its solar sail being unfurled.
Japan's space agency stretched out its Ikaros solar sail today, but it remains to be seen whether the experimental craft's paper-thin panels are capable of catching a "wave" of solar radiation and putting the sci-fi-flavored propulsion method to its first interplanetary test.
Ikaros was launched on May 20 atop an H-2A rocket from Japan's Tanegashima Space Center, along with a Venus orbiter known as Akatsuki. The solar-sail spacecraft's name pays tribute to Icarus, the young man from Greek myth who flew too close to the sun on wings of wax, but it's also an acronym standing for "Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun."
After separating from Akatsuki, Ikaros began unfolding four panels that, when fully unfurled, should look like a square kite measuring 66 feet (20 meters) along its diagonal. Pictures sent back by a camera mounted on the spacecraft's hub show the extension of four booms holding the panels, plus the unfurling of sail material. This is the "primary deployment" of the sail. During the secondary stage of deployment, the sail is stretched out to its full extent.
Centauri Dreams passes along hints that the secondary deployment has finished up as well, 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) from Earth, and says the day's developments qualify as "good news for the sail." But the crucial part of the experiment still lies ahead: Can Ikaros propel itself using the sun's power?
JAXA
An artist's conception shows Ikaros in its fully unfurled configuration.
The craft is designed to be pushed by the pressure of the sun's photons on the thin panels, which are covered with photoelectric cells to generate electricity. If the experiment works, future solar sails might be equipped with electric-powered ion engines as a second propulsion method.
So far, solar sails have provided propulsion only in science-fiction tales. In the "Star Wars" saga, for example, Count Dooku uses a solar-sail sloop to slip stealthily between scenes. Solar sails also make appearances in the Arthur C. Clarke short story "Sunjammer," last year's mega-movie "Avatar" and other fictional locales.
The nonprofit Planetary Society tried to do solar sailing for real with its Cosmos 1 spacecraft in 2005, but the project was doomed by the failure of its Russian submarine-based launch vehicle. That setback didn't deter the society. Now it's planning to launch a series of LightSail spacecraft starting next year, and so it's watching the Ikaros test with more than usual interest. Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society, told Wired Science that Ikaros' success would represent a "milestone."
Another milestone for the Japanese space effort is coming up on Sunday, when the Hayabusa probe is due to drop a sample return capsule into Australia's Woomera Test Range. The probe visited the asteroid Itokawa five years ago, and the capsule may (or may not) contain pieces of the asteroid itself. Hayabusa suffered numerous glitches on the way back, but the latest word is that the capsule is on track for a successful re-entry.
More on Ikaros and Hayabusa:
- Ikaros Blog (in Japanese)
- Planetary Society Blog watches Ikaros ...
- ... And monitors Hayabusa's approach as well
- NASA to track Japanese spacecraft's re-entry
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what do I have to do to read the rest of the article???...all I see is a box outline with the picture and the text stopping after "and says the days's".....surely you did not finish the article in mid sentance??eh??...this incomplete webpage stuff started about 2 weeks ago....wtf???????
Hm, it sounds as if you're not getting the whole story when you click on the "Show More" link. (You are clicking on that, right? Otherwise I don't think you'd be able to leave a comment.) This concept of displaying the opening lines of a story and inviting folks to see more by clicking "Show More" or by clicking on the headline of the item is part of the new design, which began about two weeks ago. If it's not working for you, we'll need to get a little info about the browser and the computer you're using. There should be a link you can click on for help or to report a glitch. Let me know if you're seriously having a problem and we'll try to address it.
There is no "Show More" link. Clicking on the Title of the article does nothing. There is no link for help or to report a glitch. Just because I can post a comment does not make the missing links magically appear.
I have the same problem... there is no "SHOW MORE" link... I've had to skip about a half dozen stories in the last few days...
Why not either leave all the text, without having to click for it, or don't fix what wasn't broken... because now for me, and obviously some others, it is broken...
I'm having the same problem as LEB-386905. I'm pretty sure it's due to the fact that I have internet explorer 6 at work and, without administrative privileges, I can't upgrade. It's really a bummer that the new system doesn't support versions of Explorer invented by dinosaurs, but it makes sense. But yes, they should go back to the old system so I can read the news.
cellospirit
I found in order to read the whole article, scroll down to the bottom of the page (yes, all the way down to the end) and click on FRONT PAGE, then you should see a SHOW MORE option at the end of the article. Happy reading.
I've sent this along to folks who can take a look at the issue. Very sorry about the problem. Sorry I can't do much about the oil spill, either.
I'm told that the issue is fixed, please let me know if things are working better in IE6 (or just generally working better).
Works for me.
Same problem as Ray.
Starting from the MSNBC page:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/
and clicking on the link for the story:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/06/09/4488288-solar-sail-spreads-its-wings
The article opens in a window with a text box, a photo, and the text box ends with the following partial sentence:
Centauri Dreams passes along hints that the secondary deployment has finished up as well, 4.6 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) from Earth, and says the day's
The comment section of the window is accessible (as noted by this comment).
This isn't the first article I've ran across with the same issue. I'm suspecting since I am reading from my work pc, and am stuck with IE6 until they rollout 8, this is probably a IE version issue
Confirmed. My home pc can see the whole post and it has IE 8.
Mr. Boyle, (or the tech guys) the "Show more" link isn't appearing. I've seen it on other pages here at msnbc.com, but not on all. I've encountered this problem elsewhere on the site as well. It seems like it's a flaw in the new template.
Same problem as Ray - but the rest of the article can be seen here:
http://bloggeri.es/cosmic-log-solar-sail-spreads-its-wings/
...and I thought I was alone in missing half of the content of my favorite column.
I am on IE6, and have noticed that by clicking on "solar-sail" next to "browse" just under the article, that it will take you to a page that has the "Show more" link. Sorry if that was confusing.
It's a few extra clicks, but it gets the job done until I get IE8 or the issue is resolved.
It will be interesting to see if the Ikaros solar sail actually works as advertised. My big concern is what happens when the craft's solar sails hits a small piece of matter at high speed. I guess it will be some time before we finally find out of the solar sail concept actually works.
To those who can't read the end of the article, it details how the Japanese Space Agency is in the final testing mode prior to launching thousands of these in an armada to conquer the galaxy. No biggie.
Actually the pressure of the sun's "photons" is so tiny that a solar sail powered only by this method of propulsion would go no where. What does push the sail along is the flow of ionized electrons and protons streaming away from the sun which have a much greater mass and therefore provide more push than photons.
I was wondering when we look forward to the first solar sailboat match races - sort of the America Cup equivalent of interplanetary voyaging. Where is Denis Connor when you need him.
When I first started writing about solar sails, I'd occasionally refer to this solar wind factor ... and get shot down for it. In most of the discussions I've seen, the solar sail has been characterized as working due to photon pressure rather than the kick provided by charged particles. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/solar_sailing/solar_sail_faqs.pdf
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/11/09/planetary-society-to-launch-three-separate-solar-sails/
Joe Blow has it right. You did not miss much. What we need is a solar sail that will suck up about a few million barrels of oil from the Gulf.
I found in order to read the whole article, scroll down to the bottom of the page (yes, all the way down to the end) and click on FRONT PAGE, then you should see a SHOW MORE option at the end of the article. Happy reading.
I'm usually the one with computer or links issues. But:
I DO see the "Show More" link, and click onto to read the whole story.
But for some reason, everyone can see when I'm on line even after I've set the "nobody" , then "save". I e-mailed Newsvine about it, and I'm doing everything right--they wrote that maybe I'm the only one who can actually see my "on line" icon.
And I've tried so many times to upload my photo and have tried different avatars. No go on that either.
Oh well...
One down and a million to go...
What I didn't how to do...upload an, old, old pic!
Darrah's walking! yes!
"So far, solar sails have provided propulsion only in science-fiction tales."
Perhaps technically true, but solar pressure has been used operationally on the unmanned space program. On Mariner 10 (1974), we had to use solar force to maintain roll control on the spacecraft between Venus and its first flyby of Mercury.
The star sensor (used for roll reference) was picking up dust particles leaving the spacecraft and latched on to these random particles until they drifted away, losing roll reference and activating the automatic star search roll program. The initial roll kick of the search triggered an unanticipated high frequency oscillation in the solar panel structure, causing the roll jets to fire in both directions simultaneously, losing attitude control fuel at an intolerable rate. Recovery was manual, working against a communication one-way-light-time of about 17 minutes, as I recall.
After the 2nd "auto-search" event went awry, we shut off the roll control search function, disabled the roll control link to the star sensor, and used differential tilt of the solar panels to maintain roll orientation. Sitting in the control room at JPL, we observed the star sensor output, and tilted the panels to counter and reverse drift around the roll axis.
Solar force was used operationally on this mission, not for propulsion but for attitude control.
Yes, I did try to qualify my remarks by referring strictly to propulsion, but I'm glad you pointed out the flip side, that the technique has been used for attitude control. Thanks, Bernie ... I'm not worthy ...